Stone Building (later East Branch of Cary Memorial Library), 1865
"Up to 1833 there was but one church in Lexington - the Meeting house on the Common. There were a number of Baptists in town and they decided to erect a church. Subscription papers were circulated but when the residents of the East Village were approached they said they would circulate their own papers. At a later meeting of all interested parties, the Villagers showed up with their subscriptions and an offer of a site - provided the new church was built in East Lexington. The meeting voted to purchase the site of the present Baptist church and the Villagers withdrew their support. The Society went ahead with their plans and the old Baptist church was built in the winter of 1833-1834. There was considerable feeling aroused - one the Villagers wrote to the Baptist Society that his subscription was pledged because of the awful story that a Unitarian church was to be built in the Village.
Eli Robbins and his family, in addition to their business and social interests, were deeply concerned with religion, slavery and temperance matters. Eli decided to meet the troubled situation in the Village and proceeded to erect this building for the use of the residents of East Lexington. It was completed in 1833. Here Ralph Waldo Emerson preached for a year and many of the most noted ministers of the times. Miss Ellen Stone gave the land and the building to the Town in 1892, to fulfill a bequest to the town in her mother's will.
This is how the “Stone Building” looked in 1865. On the piazza, Mrs. Abigail (Stone) Lothrop, born 1815, an aunt of Miss Ellen Stone; Miss Mary R. Stone, born 1860, sister of Miss Ellen Stone. In the carriage Stillman Follen Lothrop, born 1841. He was the son of Rev. Stillman Lothrop and Mrs. Abigail Stone (above) Lothrop.”